This paper presents a methodology for testing railway pantograph/catenary systems based upon the dynamically substructured system (DSS) approach for combined physical and numerical components, originally developed by Stoten and Hyde. The main advantage of DSS is that it can provide more stable substructured testing than alternative schemes, such as the commonly used hybrid simulation method, often referred to as hardware-in-the-loop simulation. The developed method is validated through experiments using a simple pantograph rig, together with a numerical simulation of the catenary. In order to realise a real-time simulation of the large catenary model, for the first time in DSS testing this study uses (I) a modal analysis technique to reduce the dimension of the contact wire model and (II) a moving window approach to represent long-distance travel of the pantograph. Finally, the experimental DSS test results are compared with simulations of the benchmark pantograph/catenary emulated system.

Contact force between a pantograph and catenary is one of the most important indices for evaluating the contact performance of the pantograph-catenary system. Hence, some contact force measuring methods have been developed. However, currently used measurement methods have some problems. Firstly, the installation of sensors in a panhead could affect the dynamic characteristics of the pantograph. Secondly, they need data transmitting equipment, because built-in sensors are set under high-voltage condition. Thirdly, some kinds of pantographs cannot be equipped with sensors in a panhead because of structural restriction. To eliminate these problems, the authors have developed a new contact force measuring method by using image processing sensors mounted on the rooftop of a train.

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